The E110 class has helped to clarify many concerns about approach and focus within a writing class. Always intrigued by the phrase “healed by the Word,” this syllabus looks closely at what the “word” is and how it might “heal.” The syllabus follows the growth of language from the spoken word to the final written product that carries an essence of ourselves beyond ourselves, and in so doing we learn to grow towards others. Without language, we cannot develop, so studying the power of language and writing is a meta-cognitive approach to understanding how words and writing work and how to improve using such a gift. Every student has such gifts within; they need only develop them.
Jadick E110 Syllabus
Overall, my experience in the University of Delaware’s E668 has been very engaging and helpful towards the creation of my own E110 class for Newark Charter High School. The structure of the class eased the burden of creating the course by allowing me to read, sample, and respond to twelve college syllabi from prestigious universities around the country. After putting the finishing touches on my syllabus, I am extremely thrilled to begin the 2016-2017 school year with fresh yet tested methods which I feel extreme ownership over. E668 and Dr. Harris have been invaluable in the creation of E110, and it would really make a lot of sense for more teachers to experience such a course as there was no fluff, but instead insight, ingenuity, and inspiration towards creating the very materials which will serve as the heart and soul of the course.
Here is my syllabus:
Beardsley Syllabus
My E110 course employs the four modes of communication—speaking, listening, reading, and writing—in the process of composing as students study human progress as a metaphor for composition improvement. Assignments explore journeys, stewardship, technology, and leadership through inspection, reflection, and introspection. In order to present ideas with accuracy and detail, students follow the writing process with specific emphasis on revision, expanding and improving current and previously written pieces. Their writing grows just as humanity has grown. They will look into the past and the present as they explore how technology has changed humankind. Being globally aware twenty-first century citizens, the culminating assignment requires that students carefully analyze the Human Ecology piece and choose the most appropriate medium for publication given their unique audience.
R6 Today’s Classroom
At this point, I am fairly excited about the variety I can establish in my course. Identifying in bits and pieces with each of this week’s professors, I also subscribe to the belief that writing and learning go hand in hand, and a course such as this relies heavily on that understanding. Students will learn a great deal about their writing being objective, logical, and substantiated as they write and revise pieces suited to given situations, audiences, and purposes. In designing this course, I agree with Wardle and Downs that design is outcome based. I first must decide what I want my students to produce. What will they accomplish? What will this course make of them? At the same time, I am also considering Yancey’s point that different times comprise different writers. When I consider what my students will become through my instruction and their dedication, I need to identify what their futures need them to be. When Yancey states that teachers often replicate instruction tailored to their own experiences, I completely understand. I remember my own experience in E110 in 1990. I easily recall that I did not know how to write, how to develop my stance, how to prove a thesis, but I learned quickly in that class. I replicate that instruction in every course I teach so that my students know the importance of the driving statement and elaboration. I even think of the outcome in terms of a lesson I learned in seventh grade: We are not allowed to express an opinion unless we can support it. Right there is one of the most important outcomes: Students must be capable of forming and supporting an opinion. I plan to carry on those lessons while at the same time fostering the composition growth of a very different group of communicators. In my undergraduate experience, I had little need for email; no one wrote text messages; social media did not exist; and a lucky few paid $20 to video conference for five minutes at Kinkos. Today’s students do all of these countless times per day, and each activity involves composition, some organized gathering of thoughts and messages. My intended outcome is that my students clearly state and support their positions across multiple communicative platforms. Yes, they will employ inquiry driven research and compose critical analysis in response to readings. They will compose human ecology proposals and solutions. They will keep a portfolio (our classroom management system even supports electronic portfolios). And just as important as the many more pieces they will create is digital composition, especially with an understanding of developing a responsible, intelligent electronic persona through which each student will publish his or her work. Right now, a host of assignments and publication platforms is swimming around in my mind. I am quite eager to pen these ideas into a sensible syllabus.
r6: Competing ideas and validation for writing in class
The final three essays of First Year Composition offered both great insight and worthwhile assignments. To begin, I had felt strongly about Villaneuva’s “Oral Report” as a research assignment since it would enable students to examine a problem with language (as I had referenced in my last blog response); however after reading Yancey, I am quite torn. Her evidence-based assignment also has a unique spin on language and research as she has students analyze artifacts such as postcards, greeting cards, or any language-based item in order to create inquiry to then be solved by argument and evidence. I feel both have true value; however, I will most likely adopt the one which lends itself toward more variety and opportunity. I like the current-event aspect of Villaneuva’s Oral Report; however, Yancey’s assignment could really work on anything ranging from an old love letter found in the attic to pamphlet from a vacation.
In contrast to Yancey’s evidence-based assignment, I really appreciated her inquiry assignment which uniquely focuses solely on “thinking.” So often as an English teacher, I find myself rushing students to make claims and find evidence, which I mostly blame on Common Core; thus, leaving little time for a focus on “thinking.” Yancey really sold me on this after her example using World War II stating, “students who have been rewarded for claim and evidence for most of their K-12 testing lives now need not to claim, not to argue, but rather to inquire” (329). However, I would heed her caution that students could become so engaged in exploring that they only want to keep investigating, so it would be my role to nudge them to “stake their claim.” I wish she would have provided a better example of this assignment, as I really want to move forward with it. I plan on using it along with a previous idea involving Vietnam since she has already modeled its use with World War II.
Wardle and Downs had an abundance of great ideas; however, two ideas really resonated with me. First of all, their dialogue about the use of models validated so much of my existence as an English teacher (no exaggeration intended). Elizabeth cleverly described how she “backs into models” and how using them at the beginning of an assignment could close off students’ thinking. Doug really made me ecstatic when he discussed the way he answers a student concern for how an aspect of a piece should be: “I most often tell them, ‘I won’t know that for sure until I see what you all write…’”(289). It’s not that I don’t know how to respond to students, but hearing such qualified professors use the same responses I use at times with a splatter of self-doubt genuinely gave me reassurance that I am doing what’s best: making the students work hard enough to figure it out for themselves with just enough feedback along the way.
Last, I thought the debate on actual time spent writing in the classroom was splendid. Doug made his point that talking about writing does take time and the most writing can be completed outside of class. However, Elizabeth’s point that “I make sure that the writing happens in class as well as out of class, because I’m just not sure the students would try some of the things I want them to unless we do them together,” (294) really aligns with how I want to run my classroom. Then she goes on to talk about the discussions that occur about the in-class writing activities. This hit home with me as I already force my students to have discussions about discussions where we look at amount of participation, interruptions, side conversations, and a discussion map to decide how it could be better. This is metacognition at its best, and the thought of incorporating more discussions about in-class writing is simply thrilling.
Although I am thrilled to finally be afforded the time to finalize my own syllabus, I could not be more thankful for all of the insightful and engaging ideas I have garnered through these twelve essays. Now I just need to fit the pieces and fragments I plan to borrow and modify to my own puzzle of a syllabus for E110. These essays have really raised the bar, and if my course can live up to these, I know it will be a sure-fire success.
R6: The Power of Language to Inform
Victor Villanueva’s “For the Love of Language” speaks to my heart as a teacher of the English language. I too have struggled to find ways to teach why I love writing to my students. I want them to experience the same self-epiphanies that would come to me while writing and rewriting, the same sense of accomplishment of learning about a minute aspect of a field in great detail, and a clearer sense of what I believe about my realities as a result of close critical writing and research. Villanueva’s six principles within his classroom are mine too, most especially the first one that language, and not just writing, is ontological and epistemological. He describes writing as “a precise way (though no science) of ordering thought, of bringing to light muddied emotions and fragments of ideas, maybe even the means to producing ideas” (260).
For me, these abilities are the power of the “word,” and rhetoric is simply the means by which we start a dialogue with others about our “ordered thoughts,” “muddied emotions,” and “fragmented ideas” so that we may share and improve our own perspectives. Other people’s responses to what we write function as mirrors to ourselves, propelling us ever forward towards better self-understanding. So using peer-editing and peer discussion to develop the dialectical conversations within the classroom would further ideas and perspectives, new approaches. All of research, company or university driven, is focused on better self-understanding and improvement of processes, communities, bodies, societies, cultures, relationships, and ourselves.
Using readings (which are finalized writing processes) opens up the dialectical processes as students discuss the authors’ intentions, purposes, and approaches to share key ideas. The readings would function as places to begin thinking and act as “finalized” models for how others have shared their thinking. I would need to stress that the class readings did not come from the pen in their perfectly channeled finished forms. By analyzing the rhetoric within the reading, we can analyze the approach taken to share a particular idea and how a good, effective finished product looks.
Though analyzing finished writing pieces is helpful in showing the end result, the writing process itself is messy, chaotic, and constantly narrowing down the idea to its cleanest, clearest form, which is why I agree that teacher feedback should focus on what and how an idea is being shared, not necessarily “justifying a grade” (263), of which I am guilty. I have “conversations” in my comments, but those comments are usually three words: “develop” and “cut wordiness.” I do ask questions and offer my own thoughts, but when scoring the same research paper assignment for 65 hours, I feel like resorting to rubber “comment” stamps. The written marginal feedback is too overwhelming, and since I offer rewrites to improve grades, I always grade the assignments with feedback that explains why the paper did not get the “A” or “B” or lower. I focus on what needs to be improved, not necessarily what they have done well, though I do try to give one meaningful positive comment before sharing the negative. Even then, students do not necessarily read the comments. For years I have been wanting a better way to grade writing.
Having time to focus on writing and writing only in a class allows me to offer feedback on drafts with the other students without having to put a number on it, which then reinforces the idea that these writing drafts are works in progress and that rewrites are not only normal but required for good writing, that students are not writing for the “grade” but for the means to communicate a bit of themselves, and in so doing, see themselves better. I will not be responsible for revising my students’ drafts; they will be after we have opportunities to discuss what and how they have written and shared an idea.
Both Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs agree with writing as a means to learn. Their thematic focuses on exploring writing as writing will always produce good discussions because the analysis of how and what we say is always interesting. Possibly their class readings o writing could address the “Habits of Mind” as seen in the Framework for Success in College Writing published by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), the National Writing Project (NWP), and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), but such habits of mind as curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and meta-cognition, are mostly experienced not while reading but while composing. If I can help students maintain these mindful habits, their writing experiences will bring them the experiences I have had that helped me to realize that more exists to me than I had imagined.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford, eds. First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice. Parlor Press, 2014. Print.
r5: An affinity space for career pursuits
In The Activity of Writing, Alexander Reid offered a point not yet mentioned in any other essays which really helped me finalize my brainstorming for one of the final writing projects in my course draft. I really admire his move to assist students in finding their “affinity space.” Although I really crave the first type he describes Sirc’s account of how “students sat in the dark, burned incense and listened to Steppenwolf,” (199) the reality is that I also want to keep my job. Thus, his point about how “passionate affinity spaces update such practices by engaging the contemporary digital network to facilitate student learning and communication,” (199) really reminds me that students should not be made to write for the sake of writing but to engage them in writing that can “shift students away from their typical habits of seeking to be finished with writing” (201). Luckily, the course will be afforded the technology and online availability to make all of this occur.
As I was planning out the last marking period of my syllabus draft, I sought to have students write a unique piece applicable to their planned career path. All I had so far were two assignments named “Writing in My Discipline” and “Career Writing,” and to be honest, all I had was a vision that at this point in the course, students would be ready write meaningful pieces to bridge their writing affinity to their career affinity. For example I imagined a Biochemical Engineering major writing an email to an employee of Gore (or a similar company) to gain partnership, followed by a correspondence of the type of writing involved in their daily work. The student would then go on to compose this lab report or whatever it came to be followed by a metacognitive reflection on the process and systems used to write the piece.
However, this all seemed to need the affinity space mentioned by Reid so when I arrived at his Article and Magazine Project, all of the loose ends came together. Students could write one more piece only with the audience of their peers as the main focus. Reid notes this difference as he states, “However, magazine article writers, editors, and publishers realize they have to compete for their readers’ attention” (204). In relation to that point, these articles, written about the technical types of writing in a variety of majors would then be used to “produce an online magazine with images and related media” (204). Instead of using volunteers as the magazine editors, it would be a collective effort to form committees in the class with input and ownership for individual aspects of the project. If the final product lived up to my expectation, it would be worthy of a link on our school’s website.
Reid’s anecdote about fiction writing workshops really sums up what I don’t want students to come away from the course with as “all too often stories end with characters suddenly dying or realizing that ‘it was all a dream’” (201). This, too, is analogous to what I want students to leave the class with: not a means to an end, but a means where they understand that “when writing is successful, writers respond with writing; when it is a failure, they respond with writing” (202).
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah, and Ronald F. Lunsford. First-year Composition: From Theory to Practice. , 2014. Print.
R5: Meta-Cognitive assignments, composing and building awareness of audiences
While reading Alexander Reid’s commentary on writing, I nodded, “yes, yes. Writing is ontological.” To become a better writer one must write often in lots of contexts with an audience in which one has an affinity so as to be better motivated to write, for better writers are motivated writers. So true. Then I read Jody Shipka’s writing commentary and continued nodding “yes” as I read about her analogy that writing is like composing. Like the musician, one hears the inner music and then begins to form that music into themes, beginning with a hook, melodies, harmonies, building repetitions, intercutting and reconfiguring, reaching the climax, and ending with a resonance that lingers.
These skills of composing music from the inner ear to the final medium is the same as writing: an exploration of themes countered against and intertwined with melodies and disharmonies building together to an effective end that seems to resonate past the last word. Writing is composing, and requires an awareness of the whole self to see that writing is not a bunch of rules memorized and forms mastered that come together on paper but a process of exploring and shaping “melodies and harmonies” with “disharmonies” that stay within tightly controlled keys and themes for an audience of one or one million.
This composing analogy reinforces Reid’s beliefs that the writing never ends, just like the music. The writing continues, as he says for his professional writers, and that is true for the professionals. But most students in my E110 class or other writing class at the high school level will not plan on being professional writers. They must know how to read critically and express themselves coherently with academic tools, but they do not need to write into infinity. Writing more without meta-cognitive thought about the writing does not necessarily improve the writing; more writing just shows that they have more to say, not necessarily how better to say it.
So reading Jody Shipka’s examples of projects and assignments was refreshing as they focused on the meta-cognitive levels of thinking with simple assignments that had broad ramifications. She asked students to record every genre of writing they have ever done with great specificity so that students could become aware of how much writing they do. They are already writers. Then she asks them to record “This is How I learned to Read and Write,” again to develop awareness that they are writers continuing to improve skills. My favorite is to find six completely different mediums that focus on the same message or stereotype and analyze how these different literary mediums affect their audiences through their approaches. The project could easily be turned into a fun classroom activity as a group (I can increase the numbers of examples) that can lead into an excellent discussion about genres, audiences, approaches, and more. I loved that assignment. My only disagreement or difference in perspective with Jody Shipka is that this meta-cognitive understanding of writing begins not with the composing process, as Shipka states, but. I believe, with the study of language itself. Studying composition theories is wonderful, but only after the students have a good understanding of the nature of language. I believe students need a meta-cognitive awareness of words and their structures and how these structures limit their thinking if unaware of such structures.
By time I began reading Howard Tinberg, I was copying down example lesson plans for they work beautifully with developing a meta-cognitive sense of writing as an ontological tool: An essay of belief focuses on the power of writing to clarify consciously for oneself what one actually does believe. A profile of another after interviewing that person focuses on the key aspects or the interpretive thesis or “nut graf” of the person, which shows how writing helps to clarify new knowledge and its significance (particularly helpful when business managers must write up reviews). The trend paper, however, is awesome, for that paper requires personal insight, research for support, and ontological purpose for self and our society.
Because I mined Shipka’s and Tinberg’s commentaries for really good assignments that focus on the meta-cognitive nature of writing, I went back to Reid’s and looked up his assigned readings and began to read. Nichols Carr’s essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” is excellent for exploring writing, thinking, reading, and the larger matrix overall. These three writing professors have been extremely helpful in focusing a meta-cognitive, ontological approach towards writing with some excellent assignments I will be borrowing.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford, eds. First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice. Parlor Press, 2014. Print.
R5: What to Write
I like how Reid states the obvious: that writers need to write and that they will only become better if they want to do so. My expectation is that any of my students who enroll in the class will fit the bill when it comes to improving. They know that the course will require a great deal of work and that they need to be willing participants. Reid’s how questions that lead to understanding of rhetoric make very good sense to me. I’d like to adopt that process, in addition to his emphasis on teaching digital rhetoric. The digital aspect of the course seems so important to me, especially when it comes to identifying the influence various media create, which leads me to Shipka’s course. Her emphasis on how language and media can be used differently to influence reminds me of an assignment that our eleventh graders complete. That task would work well as a springboard into a more in-depth piece about the power of media and vocabulary. I foresee a project that requires both research to find data supporting the effectiveness of advertisements, as well a an assignment centered around rewriting and communicating the same message to a host of different audiences. This develops essential critical thinking skills, which align with our Middle States goals.
Finally, Tinberg’s course seems very straightforward to me. I finally came across goals that mesh with my philosophy of developing both academic and work-related writing. It is founded on students’ knowing the importance of purpose, employing the writing process, and providing substantial evidence and elaboration. These are a natural progression of our current program, and students would find great success building these strengths. Two of Tinberg’s assignments intrigue me, too: the essay of application and the proposal. The application appeals because of its practicality, and I truly value realistic, applied composition. Students must develop an understanding of the everyday employment of writing as opposed the assignment style pieces to which they have become accustomed. The proposal also interests me, but I would tweak it to involve research. Students would not only write a proposal, but they would also provide researched evidence to define the problem and researched possible solutions to improve the situation, if not eradicate the problem.
As I read through First Year Composition: From Theory to Practice, I am forming a sharper picture of what will comprise my course. I am looking for a thematic mix of academic and work-related pieces that require a strong sense of audience and purpose. My writers will employ the writing process, write frequently, edit and revise, remediate, and reflect to revise again. To me, the best revision happens well after the piece is completed. Students become more critical of their work after they have grown, so an assignment written one or two months prior is the perfect canvas for revision.
R4: Focusing on Meta-cognition and Diversity
Paula Mathieu proposes that a writing course must be focused on some open ended question that focuses discussions and exploration so that the experience of “searching” for answers can be broad enough to include many interests while also narrow enough to explore a small facet of the issue. I also agree that even with such focusing, her woes about “the reality of how insufficient it all seems” in a single semester is my reality too, even though I have a year to teach a curriculum (125). Never enough time seems to exist to cover everything, so great care must be taken as to what will be presented. Currently my focus in my Brit Lit survey class is the focus on the power of the word. The mid-term and final exams must answer the same question (only cover more material in the final): Trace through the literature we have studied from Anglo-Saxon to modern the changing conscious of humanity about one certain issue. I “preach” that the “word” always comes before the physical manifestation. Literature, I firmly believe, functions as a harbinger of what is coming as society grapples with current concerns. So my focus will be on the power of language, of the “word.”
I also concur that a college level writing class must make students comfortable with scholarly research, including primary sources, and so I like her idea of teaching interviewing for the sake of research. Primary research and library skills are imperative, but without the ability to ask good questions, no amount of research will develop good writing. So having a meta-cognitive understanding of research helps students to consider “research” beyond the internet. Lots of mental doors could open up in such conversations as interviews or through “created experiences” or primary sources, leading to lots of questions to research.
Yet, Teresa Redd insists that students must be able to do more than scholarly writing to feel comfortable with their own writing skills. I also agree. All writing in one form or another is research. Some is “lived experience,” some is “created experience” as Douglas Hesse suggests, and some is searching “textual and empirical research” on the same topic (53). Either way, writing is sharing what one has experienced, discovered, or understood. So a writing class must also allow for writing done for different audiences and purposes with different mediums. Ultimately, the one goal for me, as it is for Chris Anson, is for students to be able to think with a meta-consciousness about how to explore and discover knowledge, how to consider that knowledge from an overview (twisting and turning the facts to see new perspectives and be conscious that one is doing just that), and how to communicate that knowledge in such a way that it matches the audience.
Developing these skills covers all five of Redd’s goals in her writing classes: develop authority within one’s own voice that can adapt to any situation; understand the relationships in thinking between writing, reading and research; understand how to research effectively; understand relationships between purpose, audience, and medium; and learn how to use all technologies from pen and paper to digital (147-151). Redd also stresses, as does Asao Inoue, the need to include students as the assessors to help develop that sense of meta-cognition abut their own writing, but she mixes student assessments, portfolios, and summative statements with formative assessments using rubrics and personal conferences. I love the idea of having students read their own papers before a mark is on the paper to “hear” if their errors are from proofreading (because they self-check as they read) or from a lack of knowledge (errors go right past them). That student reading offers two opportunities to assess: what writing knowledge (grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc) are they not understanding or what value lies in proofreading. Both are excellent indicators of need for improvement.
Redd’s formal assessments, like Mathieu’s, focus on “grading” the portfolios and self-assessments, which avoids hindering the “labor” of creation as Inoue fears if formal grades are placed on the writings that move towards a finished product.
My writing class will be focused on an interdisciplinary research focus, will use portfolios and student assessments, will cross mediums for different audiences and environments, and will focus on Redd’s five goals, for they are mine also.
An aside I would like to share is the sublime feeling of being part of this collegiate research world on the pedagogy of writing when seeing Joe Harris’ text Rewriting quoted and forwarded as an argument to further improve writing classes. So cool.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford. First Year Composition: From Theory to Practice. Parlor Press, 2014. Print.
Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. U of Colorado, 2006. Print.
E688: Seminar in Teaching Composition 
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